For anything that, as yet, appears to the contrary, the earliest known Marsupials may have been as highly organised as their living congeners; the Permian lizards show no signs of inferiority to those of the present day; the Labyrinthodonts cannot be placed below the living Salamander and Triton; the Devonian Ganoids are closely related to Polypterus and to Lepidosiren.

Thus, in Australia, the later Tertiary mammals are marsupials (possibly with the exception of the Dog and a Rodent or two, as at present).

It has yielded representatives of Insectivora, of Cheiroptera, of Rodentia, of Carnivora, of artiodactyle and perissodactyle Ungulata, and of opossum-like Marsupials.

No Australian type of Marsupial has been discovered in the Upper Eocene strata, nor any Edentate mammal.

The Older Eocene pre-nummulitic mammalian Fauna contains Bats, two genera of Carivora, three genera of Ungulata (probably all perissodactyle), and a didelphid Marsupial; all these forms, except perhaps the Bat and the Opossum, belong to genera which are not known to occur out of the Lower Eocene formation.

No Insectivora are certainly known, nor any opossum-like Marsupials.

But there is a still more important positive difference, inasmuch as all these Mammalia appear to be Marsupials belonging to Australian groups, and thus appertaining to a different distributional province from the Eocene and Miocene marsupials, which are Austro-Columbian.

But there is a still more important positive difference, inasmuch as all these Mammalia appear to be Marsupials belonging to Australian groups, and thus appertaining to a different distributional province from the Eocene and Miocene marsupials, which are Austro-Columbian.

A paddy-melon is a small and speedy marsupial, a sort of poor relation of the great kangaroo family.

They will send you out on horseback, the boundaries to ride But run down a marsupial and rob him of his hide, His scalp will fetch a shilling and his hide another two, Which will help to fill your pockets, Jimmy Sago, Jackaroo.

Adj. capsular; saccular, sacculated; recipient; ventricular, cystic, vascular, vesicular, cellular, camerated, locular, multilocular, polygastric; marsupial; siliquose, siliquous.

" On the 1915 Expedition Mr. Heller captured twelve new species of mammals, but, as Mr. Oldfield Thomas says: "Of all the novelties, by far the most interesting is the new Marsupial ....

The eastern continent had then, as now, its great pachyderms, elephants, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus; South America its armadillos, sloths, and ant-eaters; Australia a crowd of marsupials; and the very strange birds of New Zealand had predecessors of similar strangeness.

Scarcely anything was known of the marsupial animals, as New Holland had not as yet opened its unrivalled stores of singularities to astonish the world.

The Australian Mammalia are peculiar to the region where they are found, and are all linked together by two remarkable structural features which distinguish them from all other Mammalia and unite them under one head as the so-called Marsupials.

A hot moist climate gives rise to much endemic fever, but encourages a wonderful profusion of tropical growth, giving place in the highlands to the hardier oak and pine, and still higher to a purely alpine flora; as in Australia, the animals are chiefly marsupials; the mountain ranges, which stretch in a more or less continuous line throughout the island, have peaks that touch an altitude of 20,000 ft. and send down many navigable streams.

The strange marsupials, the snakes, the great running birds, the wild dogs of Australia, have no counterpart in New Zealand.

[Note 16: The animal here described is doubtless the opossum; the only non-Australian marsupial found in America.]